There has been much talk over the last couple of years about non-binary gender choices and increased gender fluidity, and as a result many brands have rushed into this growing trend amongst Gen Z audiences.

Whilst quite rightly there is an increased sense of acceptance of more diverse lifestyle choices, when it comes to the psychology of shopping, the vast majority of men shop quite differently from women. Especially in the beauty and well-being categories.

It may be the fact that historically, women have been shopping for beauty products, and so they have developed a broader lexicon and deeper understanding of the ingredients, benefits and importance of beauty regimes.

Conversely, one of the biggest growth areas in the category is male grooming. According to Euromonitor, sales of grooming products for men in the UK grew by 3% in 2016, and across the country men now spend collectively a whopping £1.7bn on beauty products.

As a result of the selfie generation’s interest in personal appearance, or simply an overall increased interest in wellness, the male grooming category is booming. But for most guys, it’s still a bit of a mystery.

Assembly, Estée Lauder

Estée Lauder owns multiple male grooming brands, but these were often retailed in a way that simply didn’t make sense to most male shoppers. Our challenge was to create an ‘umbrella brand’ for Estée Lauder’s male grooming portfolio that demystified the category for consumers, increased relevance, and ultimately made it simpler for men to shop.

We also had to create a tiered experiential destination where Estée Lauder could educate men on the world of grooming and demonstrate how products could fit into their lifestyle to help them enhance and express their personal style.

So, we set out on the streets of London to interview guys about their grooming attitudes, habits and preferences. We spoke to men in South, East and Central London to hear directly from them what things they look for when they are shopping for grooming products, and what Estée Lauder could do to facilitate their engagement with the category.

We learned that for the broad franchise of male consumers, talking about grooming isn’t the easiest of conversations. And that although the overwhelming majority of men do want to look their best, they also don’t want to come across as if they are trying too hard.

Men often lack a vocabulary around products in this category and want brands to make it easy for them to achieve their goals. They want to know more, but don’t want to be told. They want to discover for themselves. Based on these insights, it became clear that our main challenge was going to be breaking down the barriers to the category and encouraging self-exploration amongst our audience.

The Idea

According to Elodie Bohuon, Selfridges beauty buyer, another reason behind the surge in interest in male grooming is the adoption of a more male-friendly branding by the brands targeted at men.

So, rather than searching for the ever-elusive modern-day metrosexuals – how many of them do you know – we decided to entice the broader audience of guys that probably don’t quite know what they want, definitely wouldn’t know what to look for, and may be slightly embarrassed to ask. All of whom are style-conscious men who want to look good and feel great.

Our mission was to change the way these guys relate to male grooming by telling them everything they ever wanted to know but were too afraid to ask.

So, we’ve dialed up the information and knowledge to give them a vernacular chiming with their everyday, breaking down barriers and borders to make access easy, and interaction obvious. We aimed at creating an all day, everyday destination that could be absorbed into the lives of our target consumers and allowed them to navigate the grooming category at their own pace.

The result

The result of that is Assembly, an umbrella-brand which houses multiple other Estée Lauder brands selling beauty products for male consumers. We created the brand positioning, strategy and naming, the visual identity, brand world and a scalable retail environment for the brand. The name references both the simplicity and graphic nature of flat pack assembly guides. The wordmark is functional, bold and simple whilst the missing sections in the wordmark suggest the process is not yet complete.

The collaterals created always attempted to visualise and simplify the process, whilst still looking stylish, clean and modern. To conclude the design process, we created a very bold, graphic guideline document in all black and white for maximum impact. Assembly is currently being rolled out across the UK, from experiential to concessions.

Image by First Aid Box London

The Office of National Statistics last year revealed a fall in global alcohol consumption for the first time this century. It has been widely reported that the proportion of young people choosing to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes is the lowest on record. Meanwhile, the preoccupation with personal image continues to rise at an alarming rate. Our fixation with our image and our health is forcing retailers and alcohol brands to stand up and take notice. It is a shift in attitude that is fast reshaping the food and drinks brand landscape with new category winners and losers. With it come new challenges and opportunities that will disrupt business as usual for traditional players.

Some no and low-alcohol brands have emerged on top and are by nature well placed to compete and cater to new consumer demand. In recent days we have seen Tesco roll out the largest NOLO (No and Low) alcohol section in its history – a decision that will accelerate growth and bring more visibility to the category as a whole.

The question remains how far and how fast the NOLO category will grow. Whilst 1 in 5 young adults in the UK have turned away from alcohol altogether, 4 in 5 have not. With the NOLO category accelerating, does this encroach on the territory of traditional alcoholic drinks? The increased preoccupation with health has not as yet created a nation of teetotallers so much as a nation of people that agree with (and actually abide by) the notion of ‘less is more’.

Across no, low and traditional alcohol brands we see resources pouring into new product development. Others are reassessing how they frame their ranges and concentrating funds and efforts on evolving the consumer experience on and off-trade.

The challenge for drinks brands looking to have a portion of the fast-growing ‘free-from’ (or ‘less-is-more’) pie will be to design products and experiences that don’t just ride the wave, but actually influence a shift in mindset and a resulting change in behaviour.

As a retail and branding design agency with extensive experience in the drinks category we ourselves started to take notice of the trend through our clients. We decided to investigate and focus in on three behavioural pillars that seem to be having the most notable impact in boosting growth in the category, both for NOLO brands and for the alcohol brands that are succeeding at reinventing their offer: ‘Wellness’, ‘Brand Me’, and ‘The New Counterculture’. In this piece we investigate how brands are adapting and in turn influencing new behaviours through design – from product and experience, through to purchase.

Branding diversity is not a new idea, but it takes guts to do it nowadays.

For years brands have proudly championed values of multiculturalism and equality, and tried to make such beliefs central to what they represent. But recent developments in politics, coupled with growing resentment towards multi-national corporations and their visions of a globalised world are now testing brands’ willingness to stand up to their beliefs.

We have recently seen two Sharing Economy giants, Uber and Airbnb, become part of debate on social media for their stance on the ‘Muslim-ban’ proposed by President Trump.

#DeleteUber trended on multiple social media platforms when Uber didn’t join NYC yellow cab drivers in a protest, and Lyft – a main competitor in the USA – became one of the most downloaded apps in the App store. Uber faced further criticism because its CEO was part of the president’s economic advisory board – he stepped down due to public pressure, just to end up facing criticism from Trump supporters for doing it.

Airbnb on the other hand, has been praised by how it handled the same issue; it engaged its global community of hosts to support everyone affected by the ban, and is now rolling out a larger campaign to continue to champion its belief in a world without barriers (#WeAccept), which included a 30-second Super Bowl spot.

Their goal is to offer short-term housing for 100,000 people in need in the next five years.

2017 is likely to put more brands in the same situation; some have already started to reassess their stance in socio-economic matters. But there is a vast array of articles and studies from which to learn about Millennial and Gen Z consumers’ preference for brands with strong values.

IBM has changed its logo in protest against anti-LGBT legislation in the United States

So it gets down to a matter of long-term versus short-term vision; should brands forget equity that has taken time, money and effort to build and act impulsively, or do they stand up to their beliefs and values and aim at building a legion of loyal fans from a next generation of consumers?

Earlier this month, Bloomberg Technology claimed that Snapchat now boasts more active daily users than Twitter; its user base is also expected to overtake that of both Twitter and Pinterest by the end of 2016.
Snapchat is just 4 years old, but it is widely used by Millennials, and is more popular than Instagram with Gen Z.
8 billion videos are viewed daily on the social network, which is predicted to become the main platform for digital video by 2020. Snapchat’s popularity has also affected digital video consumption on other platforms; people are now 9x more likely to watch something to completion if it comes in vertical format – once regarded as Snapchat’s anomaly.
However, the rise of digital video is by no means limited to Snapchat. Facebook announced last Tuesday that video now generates 13.2x more chatter on the platform than it did in 2015. Video is also growing on Instagram, and it’s front and centre to the long-term strategies of other tech-giants such as Twitter and Spotify. It will account to more than 80% of all consumer Internet traffic by 2020.
For brands, the rise of digital video is very good news. It allows for very sophisticated collection of data, which leads to more effective targeting, and it makes possible to reach a whole new generation of consumers at key stages of the shopper journey. According to comScore, product-related videos on e-stores are already making shoppers 64% more likely to complete purchases.

The Millennial 20/20 conference took place last week in London. It was a 2-day event where some prominent figures from the creative, technology and retail industries gathered to discuss a much-hyped demographic group, and to share their views on the future of commerce to the disputed Gen Y consumer.

Millennial 20/20 covered a range of topics, with special attention given to trends such as real-time retail and mass-personalisation. The content shared was current and up-to-date, and even included some very fresh announcements made by Zuckerberg the day before, at Facebook’s annual conference in San Francisco.

Virtual reality was a big at hit at Millennial 20/20 too, with plenty of VR content to be experienced.

For brands interested in using VR technology to engage with the Millennial consumer, things are about to get even more interesting: Facebook has just announced the launch of Social VR, transforming the nature of the experience into one of connecting with other people in the virtual world.